Bookies, as everyone on the wrong end of a losing bet knows, are a heartless lot.

But even the most hardboiled of bag-swingers, even those not averse to hiring large tattooed gentlemen to collect unpaid debts, would baulk at framing the odds on a punter having her toenails ripped out or his genitals clipped to a truck battery.

The current Australian government has no such benevolent hesitation. The Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, is planning to increase the stakes dramatically in deciding whether his nation should send an asylum seeker away to the dungeons and the hands of brutes.

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And he wants to put a figure on the ghastly business. Yes. He’s offering an each-way bet, set a bit shy of 50-50.

Applicants for asylum on the basis of fear of torture must establish, under his proposal, that there is more than a 50 per cent probability that they will be subjected to agony or even death if returned to the country they have fled.

In short, if there is a mere 49 to 50 per cent chance of escaping being hung by one’s thumbs from meathooks while being thrashed by a length of electrical flex, that’s good enough for Mr Morrison. They can be sent to whatever fate might await them.

Precisely who will determine what unfortunate souls get the losing end of such a bet, or how it might be possible to calculate the percentage chance of torture being applied in a soundproofed cell far, far away is not laid out in Morrison’s benignly titled Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2014.

What is laid out, however, is the mighty plunge in Australia’s willingness to protect seekers of asylum from torture.

Until now, asylum has been available to those who can establish there is a 10 per cent chance they will be tortured if sent home. A one-in-10 probability of being reduced to a whimpering bloodied mess might not sound particularly attractive to those possessing a heart, but it was deemed to constitute a ‘‘real chance’’.

Not enough for Mr Morrison. His Bill replaces a ‘‘real chance’’ with ‘‘more likely than not’’, which he deems to mean that there needs to be a greater than 50 percent chance that a person would suffer significant harm in the country they are returned to.

A halfway sensible punter would walk away from a bookie offering odds like that. Asylum seekers, of course, have no choice about taking the bet.

There is a choice name for a nation returning an individual to a country where there is a risk of him or her being tortured. It is ‘‘refoulement’’, and it is prohibited under the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Morrison, of course, argues his Bill does not constitute refoulement, and anyway says Labor was using the same calculation and he's simply putting it into legislation. So let’s shorten the word and call it for what it sounds: plain foul.

13 comments

First of all Tony, your slanted opinion piece could use some balance. First, drop the emotive language. At the point they are subject to these new rules, they are no longer 'asylum seekers' as they will have been determined not to be refugees. How about illegal arrivals, that is closer to an apt description. Looking at places like Iraq and Syria, is equally dishonest. Right now, we have Australians going over to fight in these wars, by choice. Turning to Iraq, who should we accept, Shia (currently in power) or Sunni (trying really hard to get into power)? The elected Iraqi government, whatever their failings, are trying to repel an insurgency, so brutal, that Al Quaida doesn't want them, and yet you propose that we shelter able bodied men who should be back there defending their country. I have a word for those men, and it is not 'refugee'.

Commenter

Citizen

Location

Adelaide

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 1:08PM

Citizen. And when it comes to the unrest in the Middle East and particularly Iraq, you think we're not implicated?

Commenter

Jules

Location

Sydney

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 2:27PM

That's it Jules. The Middle East has only experienced unrest since 1991 hasn't it?

Commenter

The Bujoo

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 3:42PM

Morrison and Abbott are brutally playing with the lives of these asylum seekers and refugees. It is so pathetic and sad that Morrison and Abbott are stooping so low. Abbott & Morrison have put them in a fry pan by placing them in detention centres and now they are tossing innocent refugees and asylum seekers back into the fire? Sheer lack of humanity, humility, compassion and apathy from Abbott government saddens me.

Commenter

FlowerGoddess

Location

Perth

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 1:09PM

"... tossing innocent refugees and asylum seekers back into the fire".Let's just ignore the fact that the country-shopping economic migrants that will be sent back would have been processed and found NOT to be actual refugees? Better cut back on that weed, @flower.It'll ruin any thought process that you might have had.

Commenter

The Other Guy

Location

Geelong

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 2:38PM

jack richards ---- no all youv'e done is get rid of compassion and decency. thank god all australians don't think like you. that would be a very sad day.

Commenter

judy

Location

central coast

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 1:17PM

I guess it is a 50:50 bet on torture for Iraq and other ME countries ......... Sunni or Shiite.....

Commenter

50:50

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 1:27PM

Just when you think this Government can't stoop any lower and the squaddies couldn't possibly get behind anything even more appalling, they can and they can.

Seriously, you squaddies; you are now sanctioning sending people back to countries where even this appalling Government believes there is a very significant chance of torture or death?!?

I hope that one day at least some of you will regret your current views.

Commenter

jofek

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 1:32PM

Don't worry jofek. None of this will happen and it will all be as irrelevant as the Migration Act 1958.

Commenter

The Bujoo

Date and time

June 26, 2014, 3:44PM

Rex,

commentors like you miss the whole Point Australia is a signatory to the Refugee Convention and isa breaking their commitment under International Law to that Convention.

The Convention makes no reference to chance of tortture being a criteria for claiming refugee status, but rather qoutes "persecution" which is a much lower threshold.It also implicitly states that coiuntries should do nothing to prevent people seeking asylum "ie current stop boat policy" and in fact should openly accept and aid asylum seekers.

On all points the government acts in contradiction to these laws the country has voluntarily signed up to.

So consider this if we continuje to break or fail to live up to the Internatiional Law, how are the other countries going to look at our own apealks to IL law? Answer is they will laugh and then satate as your country is ignoring Il law we will ignore it as it applies to you & yours.

In effect Australia is isolating itself into a homophopic white supremacist outcast from the rest of the world.